Shining Your Inner Light

MALLIKA REDDY is the Founder of Canceled Plans, a sustainable clothing line and top podcast in India. In one episode with MAMATA SUBRAMANYAM, the two of them discuss the importance of mental wellness, tools to strengthen mental fitness, and the importance of taking responsibility for your own light.

- MAMATA SUBRAMANYAM

Q: Hi Mamata, a while back, you were on a one-way path to becoming a doctor (your family is full of medical professionals), but that didn't happen. It was a canceled plan.

Yeah, that's been my biggest canceled plan, because for so long that was the one-way trajectory I was on. Everyone thought I was going to be a doctor. I thought I was going to be a doctor, even though I didn't want to be one. Halfway through college, I wasn't doing well in pre-med classes, and it was not because I didn't have the interest or the intelligence to do well. My own mental health issues plus not being naturally good at those subjects was a combination for disaster.

I'm grateful to my mom, who saw me struggling and saw that it wasn't what I wanted to do. She said, "Okay, maybe you should try something different." There were a lot of disappointed people, including me, as it was who I thought I was supposed to be for a long time. That vision was molded by so many people, and it was all I knew as my identity. I still struggle, because it derailed everything.

Q: That couldn't have been easy. How did you navigate that decision? You said you were struggling with mental health back then.

As a child raised in the U.S. with immigrant parents, there is a part of me that is built to become my parents' dreams. That is not at all a knock against immigrant parents in the U.S. with dreams, but it's a lot of pressure on them and their kids. We're finally getting to a place where society has language for it. Back then, I was so compliant, and even the idea of stepping out of that shell was terrifying, because it had been an unsafe comfort zone for so long.